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The European Commission has cleared French state support for an experimental tidal power plant off the northwestern coast of the country, saying the aid given was in line with European rules.

France will support the construction of four turbines, which will each produce 1.4 megawatts of electricity, through a direct grant and repayable advances, the Commission said, without stating the amount of money pledged.

The NEPTHYD (Normandie Energie PiloTe HYDrolien) pilot farm will be located at Raz Blanchard, west of the Cotentin peninsular. A subsidiary of Engie will build and operate the plant for 20 years.

The Commission said the project supported market entry of a novel renewable energy technology, including turbines with several innovative features, with aid limited to the cost of producing electricity from the plant.

Today’eo Ship Photo Of The Day (SPOTD) features the BlueTEC Texel tidal energy platform.

August 26, 2016 by John Konrad

Taking just six months from the drawing board to realisation, the BlueTEC Texel tidal energy platform was installed in the summer of 2015 and is operating off the island of Texel in the Netherlands. The prototype is producing electricity from the tides into the local grid.

BlueTEC Modular was designed by Damen to be transported and installed all over in the world to provide clean energy in remote areas and small islands, replacing diesel generators.

BlueTEC Texel tidal energy platform.

Just before the end of 2015, the platform was fitted with a more powerful Tocardo T2 turbine and, in early 2016, the platform was commissioned with a larger T2 tidal turbine. Currently the platform generates clean electricity from the tides in the Wadden Sea of The Netherlands.

Ambitious plans have been drawn up for a network of "tidal lagoons" around the UK coast that could provide up to a quarter of the country's electricity—and there is potential to roll out the technology in many parts of the world.

Tidal lagoons work by using a wall to capture a body of water in the sea or a tidal estuary pushed in on the rising tide. The water drives turbines as the tide comes in and then, as the tide falls, the turbines are reversed and the energy from the falling tide is harnessed again.

As Geoffrey Chaucer, one of the earliest English poets put it: "Time and tide wait for no man." Unlike with wind and solar, the amount of energy being produced from tides is predictable months in advance and is now being recognized as a major renewable resource.

More Tidal Lagoons

Planning approval has already been given for a £1.3 billion pathfinder project at Swansea Bay, South Wales, described by developers as "a scalable blueprint for a new, global, low-carbon power industry." Another nine lagoons are planned around tidal hotspots in the Severn Estuary and North-West England/North Wales. These would have the potential to generate 25,000MW of electricity—enough to provide 12 percent of the UK's electricity needs.

The company behind the proposals, Tidal Lagoon Power, already has teams working in Northern France and India and is studying opportunities in Mexico and Canada's Atlantic coast. Further tidal lagoon markets may exist in South America, China, South-East Asia and Oceania.

Tidal power is recognized by the EU's Joint Research Centre as a key contributor to the continent's future energy mix. Its main attraction is that, unlike other renewable energy sources, it does not require the wind to blow or the sun to shine.

An oceanographer at Southampton University, Dr. Simon Boxall, said the technology has improved to the point where tidal energy was a "no-brainer," with the latest bi-directional turbines capable of generating power on both incoming and outgoing tides. He said that with sufficient investment it could provide up to a quarter of UK electricity needs within 20 years.

"We can always rely on tides—they come in and they go out and they will continue doing so for thousands of years. Parts of the UK have tidal ranges in excess of 15 meters, so that's a heck of a drop of water and that's happening twice a day—or four times a day when you count the water coming in and going out," said Dr. Boxall.

"The other great advantage is that the tides aren't the same in different locations, so if you've got a network of tidal power stations you are always generating electricity: 24 hours a day, seven days a week," added Dr. Boxall.

In December a former UK energy minister, Charles Hendry, published an independent review, concluding: "Power from tidal lagoons could make a strong contribution to UK energy security, as an indigenous and completely predictable form of supply."

He said the UK was well-placed to take a global lead and with economies of scale and mass manufacture of turbines, turbine housing and other components costs could be substantially reduced.

Cheap Electricity

To be viable the new industry would require subsidies, with a guaranteed premium price for electricity generated. However, Hendry calculated that in the long term tidal lagoons will work out cheaper than wind and "significantly less expensive" than nuclear. And they could go on generating for 140 years—providing clean, subsidy-free energy long after other energy plants have been decommissioned.

The technology is not without its drawbacks. Artificial lagoons can cause increased silting-up of shipping lanes. Tidal estuaries are also important for wading birds, marine mammals and migratory fish and conservation groups have warned that the ecological impacts of tidal lagoons are not well understood and that any roll-out of lagoons in the UK should be conditional on the Swansea project being tried and tested. Backers of the technology say management practices can be adapted to address such concerns—and they point out that lagoons can provide environmental benefits, acting as artificial reefs for marine wildlife.

The UK government is expected to announce a final decision on the Swansea Bay project within the next few months.

A "Welcome to Lerwick" sign in the Shetlands, which is using its strong winds and stormy seas to turn the islands into a European renewable energy giant

Strong winds and stormy seas have helped turn the Shetland Islands in the North Atlantic into a European renewable energy giant, producing more power than it knows what to do with.

The tidal power underwater turbines that were completed last month are only the latest green energy project for an archipelago that has been reliant for decades on the North Sea offshore industry.

Even homeowners are getting in on the act with small wind turbines in their gardens and solar panels on their roofs—somewhat optimistically in an area where winter daylight lasts just six hours.

"We're not 100 percent self sufficient but we're quite a long way towards it," Jim Dickson, 69, told AFP at his home in the windswept village of Brae, referring to electricity generation for his own house.

Dickson, who lives near the Sullom Voe oil terminal, can power the building and an electric powered Nissan Leaf car from a turbine in his garden with enough left over to feed into the island's grid when conditions are favourable.

"What I make from the government for producing per kilowatt hour more than pays for what I buy from the grid, so effectively there is no power bill."

The former harbour master knows about the dangers of fossil fuels.

He was winched aboard the out of control oil tanker MV Braer in 1993 during the worst cyclone on record in the North Atlantic, in an ill-fated attempt to prevent it running aground.

His efforts to attach a tow rope failed and the ship crashed into the rocks at Quendale Bay, spilling 84,700 tonnes of crude oil into the sea.

The nation was aghast at images of Shetland's famous seabirds drowning in black ooze.

Harnessing the sea

The oil industry in Shetland began in the 1970s with the development of the North Sea fields.

The Brent field east of the archipelago became an emblem of the industry, with "Brent Crude" becoming a benchmark for oil trading around the world.

Oil giant Shell has announced plans to decommission the field but new discoveries west of Shetland could give a boost to the industry.

French energy firm Total has invested £3.5 billion (4.1 billion euros, $4.4 billion) in a new gas plant near Sullom Voe that opened last year to extract gas from its fields west of Shetland, Laggan and Tormore.

"Producing gas and oil from the west of Shetland basin is very, very challenging," field operations manager Simon Hare told AFP on a hill overlooking the plant, a sprawling development which stands in sharp contrast to the rest of the islands' natural beauty.

A gas flare burns at the Shetland Gas Plant

The gas plant is designed for a lifetime of 30 years.

But environmentalists are pinning their hopes on another energy asset under the waters around Shetland.

"In tidal, we're very fortunate in Scotland," said Patrick Ross-Smith, Shetland development officer at Nova Innovation, which has installed three 100 Kilowatt turbines in the Bluemull Sound.

Scotland has 24 percent of Europe's entire marine energy potential because of its powerful tides.

"It's great to harness some of that in Shetland," he said.

The turbines' success has had the odd effect of creating too much power.

"The Shetland grid is itself constrained now. It cannot take any more renewables," he said.

Around 10 percent of the Shetland Islands' electricity is generated from renewables and wind and tidal generators are only licenced to produce up to that limit.

There is no connecting cable between Shetland and mainland Britain and as the renewable energy cannot easily be stored to ensure stable supply, the turbines have to be switched off from time to time.

The proposal for a connector line to link Shetland to the mainland 200 miles (322 kilometres) away remains uncertain.

For Dickson, the more renewables the better.

"You will always need hydrocarbons to power your jumbo jet, for example, but you shouldn't be making electricity with hydrocarbons," he said.

Scotrenewables Tidal Power Ltd. reports its SR2000 floating tidal turbine deployed for testing at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, Scotland, achieved its rated 2 MW export capacity on April 12.

Scotrenewables said the SR2000 reached its fully-rated power at EMEC’s Lashy Sound after undergoing a phased testing program that began after the unit was deployed in December 2015.

The unit is more than 60 meters (200 feet) long and weighs more than 500 metric tons.

In March, the user selection board of the US$11.8 million Funding Ocean Renewable Energy through Strategic European Action (FORESEA) project awarded “Recommendations for Support” to 15 offshore renewable energy technologies. Scotrenewables, one of the 15 recipients, received funding from FORESEA via EMEC to test its SR2000.

In 2013, Switzerland-based engineering company, ABB, invested $12 million in Scotrenewables after previously providing funding for the SR2000. HydroWorld.com reported in December 2012 ABB announced it invested $8.12 million in Scotrnewables, alongside an additional $6.24 million from Fred Olsen and Total S.A.

Andrew Scott, Scotrenewables chief executive officer, said: “We are tremendously excited to have the SR2000 demonstrating the performance and cost advantages of our floating tidal technology, in line with forecasts, whilst delivering new benchmarks within the tidal sector. This performance resets the bar for the costs of delivering tidal power. Achieving this industry milestone is a goal the team at Scotrenewables have worked tirelessly towards for a long time — the credit lies with them for these fantastic achievements.”

Neil Kermode, EMEC managing director said, “Everybody at EMEC offers their congratulations to Scotrenewables in reaching peak power on the SR2000. This milestone is testament to years of hard work and dedication shown by the Scotrenewables team. It further demonstrates that through dogged, unrelenting innovation tidal energy is getting ever closer to becoming part of our carbon free energy mix.”

Scotrenewables said it is focused on building up generation on the SR2000 during the immediate future and demonstrating its power performance in parallel with the unit’s unique low operational costs.